What's next for 'Calendar 2.0'?

Proposal on hold after requests for more evidence and broader community involvement

Oct. 10, 2013

Caitlin Waddick of Shelburne holds a sign opposing the proposed regional 'Calendar 2.0' on Wednesday evening in the Burlington High School auditorium, where she stood for much of the 1.5-hour discussion. / APRIL BURBANK/FREE PRESS

Written by

April Burbank

Free Press Staff Writer

A proposed academic calendar change that has stirred community opposition is “off the table” for the next school year, and now it’s time for regional superintendents to begin sorting through a mountain of feedback.

The Champlain Valley Superintendents Association planned to hold one last community forum on the issue Thursday evening, rounding out a two-week series that had drawn hundreds of people to local schools to give feedback, much of which was critical.

John Barone, superintendent for the Milton Town School District, said the group of superintendents that had proposed the calendar decided on Tuesday that they would not push to implement the proposal in the 2014-15 school year, which had been an original goal.

As currently formulated, “Calendar 2.0” would maintain 175 student learning days in the regional calendar but shorten summer and add more vacation time throughout the year. Superintendents call those breaks “intersessions” and say they could be used for enrichment or remediation for students and professional development for teachers.

Superintendents are legally authorized to set the region’s school calendar each year, and Barone said in an interview that when the superintendents vote on a calendar for next year — which has traditionally happened in January or February — he expects that it will look similar to what schools and families are used to.

He announced the decision Wednesday at Burlington High School, and he said the group of 14 superintendents would post the results of the forums online and begin discussing what they had heard.

“I think we’re going to have a lot to talk about,” Barone said. He said the superintendents may make adjustments to the proposal or “go back to the drawing board” if necessary.

“Honestly, we want to wait until we have a chance to review all of the comments before we make any definitive statement in terms of how we’re moving forward,” Barone added.

The community forums began in a packed cafeteria at Essex High School, where Barone estimated that more than 400 people attended. There were so many questions and comments from parents that organizers decided to sweep aside their planned activities in favor of an open microphone, a format they retained during additional forums in St. Albans, Burlington and Hinesburg.

(Page 2 of 3)

Barone told the crowd in Burlington that the superintendents had concluded that there was not enough “community readiness” to move forward with “Calendar 2.0.”

“We have decided not to implement this current calendar, this proposal, for the 2014-2015 school year,” Barone said. “However, having said that, we do have a responsibility to adopt a calendar. We will continue to study a calendar. We will continue to solicit your input into a calendar, and we will make an informed decision.”

Many of the people who spoke questioned the reasoning behind the proposal and raised myriad concerns about its implications for students, teachers, parents, school facilities and extracurricular activities.

“I was really bothered by Superintendent Barone’s constant reference to ‘not next year.’ No. Just take it off the table,” said Maurice Mahoney of South Burlington, who had been a teacher for 30 years. “‘Not next year’ causes a lot more distrust with parents and with teachers and the rest of the community. It isn’t what people want. You now know that.”

Some people also told the superintendents that they were upset that they had not been included in early discussions of the proposal, which had been in the works for about two years.

“I was really insulted as a teacher — and I know many, many, many people who were, and probably students and parents as well — that we weren’t included in the conversation before the proposal was created,” said Eve Berinati, an English teacher at Burlington High School. “Let us be part of making proposals, not just hearing them once you’ve got them, because we have lots of great things to say, and we want to help.”

Henry Prine, a senior at Burlington High School, was one of several students who spoke in favor of the proposal during the forums, but he said he disagreed with the way it had been communicated.

“As I look around the room here, the main group I see missing is that there are very few students and teachers here,” Prine said, encouraging more intentional outreach to students, parents and teachers. “Have them help lead you to the answer, and I think you’re much more likely to get community support.”

(Page 3 of 3)

Korinna Hillemann of Burlington, who has two children, said she supported the proposed calendar. She said it reminded her of growing up in Germany, where she said students took two-week breaks throughout the school year.

“I always enjoyed those longer vacations. You don’t have this big stretch like a marathon,” Hillemann said. “I just want to encourage you guys to really think about how it would feel to have two weeks maybe in February or March, or a longer vacation in the fall. That would be actually awesome.”

Amanda Levinson of Burlington, who has a child in first grade, told the crowd she had read studies that indicated that a new calendar system could work if it had community support and if it responded to a clearly identified need.

“What is the clearly identified need?” Levinson asked the superintendents.

“The need is student learning,” answered Burlington School District Superintendent Jeanné Collins. “The study of how students and adults learn has changed since the current calendar came into place over a hundred years ago.”

Collins added that the federal No Child Left Behind Act had pushed schools into “the world of data.”

“As data is part of our world, and as superintendents, we feel that we really have an obligation to not just do the same things that we’ve always been doing when we know that we have students who are not achieving, and when we know that the world is changing around us,” Collins said.

Susan Harrington, the parent of a fifth-grade student and an English professor at the University of Vermont, said the superintendents should present a data-driven case for changing the calendar and give the community more information about the proposed intersessions.

“We deserve better than a research project that’s not based on evidence,” Harrington said. “I would urge you to make more clear the role of data in your decision-making process and also to bring forth educational policies that have a lot more of the logistics filled in about the nature of what it would take to actually implement these solutions.”

Superintendents said multiple times that they were encouraged to see rooms full of people who were passionate about education.

“We’re going to rethink how we have this conversation,” Collins said on Wednesday, “but we don’t want to lose the energy that’s in this room.”